Marquette University Press
announces a new
Urban Life Series
under the editorship of
Dr. Thomas Jablonsky,
Director of the Institute for Urban Life & the Harry G. John Professor of Urban Studies at Marquette
Volume 4
Bureaus of Efficiency: Reforming Local Government in the Progressive Era by Mordecai Lee. ISBN 978-0-87462-081-8. 292 pp. paper. $30
This volume reconstructs a largely forgotten phenomenon in American urban history, the establishment of bureaus of efficiency as part of the civic reform agenda during the Progressive era at the beginning of the twentieth century. The goal of such bureaus was to promote efficiency in local government, as a way of fighting political corruption, urban machines and political bosses. Efficiency bureaus sought to professionalize local government through civil service systems, open competitive bidding, separation of public administration from politics, and reorganizing departments to reduce duplication.
Bureaus of efficiency in some cities were nonprofit agencies pushing for governmental reform from the outside. In other cities, efficiency bureaus were established by reformers as departments within municipal government, school districts or counties. They viewed the latter approach as a way to press for reform from the inside. Two cities, Chicago and Milwaukee, had both nonprofit and municipal efficiency bureaus. Other major cities with efficiency bureaus included Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Kansas City (MO), and Rochester (NY).
The book is a study of these bureaus of efficiency, with especial attention to the interesting circumstance of two cities, Chicago and Milwaukee, having both a nonprofit efficiency bureau and a municipal one. This permitted comparing and contrasting the operations and impact of efficiency bureaus that were nonprofit agencies with the public sector one in the same city and during the same historical era.
Efficiency bureaus as vehicles for urban reform have since died out, but not their underlying goal. Efficiency has remained powerful siren call in American political culture in the twenty-first century. In that respect, little has changed conceptually from the days of the bureaus of efficiency during the Progressive era, nearly a century earlier. The legacy of the seemingly anachronistic concept of an efficiency bureau remains alive and well in contemporary times. This string of American urban history has not played itself out yet. The holy grail of efficiency in government is likely to remain a viable and powerful concept well into the twenty-first century.
Mordecai Lee, Ph.D., is a professor of governmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Prior to joining the academy, he was a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, legislative assistant to a Congressman, elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly for three terms and the State Senate for two terms, and executive director of a nonprofit agency. His main areas of interest are US history and government public relations. He is author of Institutionalizing Congress and the Presidency: The U.S. Bureau of Efficiency, 1916-1933 and The First Presidential Communications Agency: FDR’s Office of Government Reports and editor of Government Public Relations: A Reader.
Volume 3
Milwaukee’s Jesuit University: Marquette 1881–1981 by Thomas J. Jablonsky. ISBN-13: 978-087462080-1 & ISBN-10: 087462080-5. 438 pages. 130 illustrations. $40. Gold stamped cloth bound with color dustjacket. Notes. Index.
Inspired by the ambitions of Milwaukee’s first bishop, John Martin Henni, Marquette College opened in September 1881 on a hilltop overlooking the city’s expanding downtown. Named for the great explorer and missionary of the American Midwest, Pére Jacques Marquette, the institution’s educational foundation drew upon the well-developed, clearly-elucidated traditions of the Society of Jesus. After twenty-five years as a small, liberal arts college, Marquette blossomed into Wisconsin’s largest private university through its affiliation with the Milwaukee Medical College in 1907, the purchase of two, privately-owned law schools in 1908, the establishment of a engineering college that same fall, and finally, the opening of journalism and business programs in 1910. By this time, the institution had moved from its original hilltop site at Tenth and State streets to Grand Avenue, alongside the Church of the Gesu. Soon Marquette set a course toward coeducation, the first Catholic college/university in the world to make this choice. Marquette’s reputation as Milwaukee’s university grew steadily during the 1920s, accompanied by the school’s first building boom. Dependent from its earliest days upon tuition income, the school struggled through the hardships of the Great Depression and enrollment disruptions of World War II. With the end of that conflict, however, Marquette came into full glory, becoming by the late 1950s the largest Catholic university in the country. The quarter of a century preceding the school’s centennial celebration in 1981 was highlighted by an urban renewal program that transformed the campus neighborhood, by the appearance of a lay-dominated leadership core, and by an outspoken student body experiencing every emotion of the 1960s and 1970s. 
Based on a complete rereading of the university archives, this volume depicts the first one hundred years of Milwaukee’s Jesuit University, with an emphasis upon the themes of student life, administrative decision-making, and Marquette in Milwaukee.
Thomas Jablonsky, a member of the Department of History at Marquette, is the Harry G. John Professor of Urban Studies. Born and raised in Chicago, the author completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at California State University, Los Angeles, and his doctorate in American history at the University of Southern California where he subsequently spent nearly two decades before coming to Marquette University in 1995 as director of the Institute for Urban Life. Milwaukee’s Jesuit University is the third volume in the Urban Life Series, published by Marquette University Press.
Order Milwaukee's Jesuit University: Marquette, 1881-1981 by Dr. Thomas J. Jablonsky
Volume 2
Milwaukee Stories. Edited by Thomas J. Jablonsky. ISBN-13: 978-0-87462-079-5-0 and ISBN-10: 0-87462-079-1. Urban Life Series # 2. Paper. 464 pp. $30
Section Editors:
Brigitte Charaus
John A. Degniz
John McCarthy
Christopher Miller
Daryl Webb
Milwaukee’s captivating evolution from a settlement blessed with nature’s bounties to a mighty industrial workplace is presented through its people, places, and institutions. Culled from the publications of the Milwaukee County Historical Society, these articles provide intimate accounts of the area’s original inhabitants, pioneering settlers such as Solomon Juneau, entrepreneurs who saw a prosperous future on the shores of Lake Michigan, ethnic and racial groups who envisioned themselves as part of that future, institutions such as hospitals and a veterans’ home designed to serve residents, and political leaders whose careers ranged from crook to guardian angel.
Each thematic section is introduced by a short essay that supplies a context for the articles that follow. Photographs from the collections of the County Historical Society provide fleeting glimpses into yesterday’s world. A collaborative effort of the Milwaukee County Historical Society and Marquette University, Milwaukee Stories brings home the adage that each one of us, great and small, contributes our individual piece to the development of local history. May each reader savor these lives from Milwaukee’s past.
Marquette University Press
announces a new
Urban Life Series
under the editorship of
Dr. Thomas Jablonsky,
Director of the Institute for Urban Life & the Harry G. John Professor of Urban Studies at Marquette
Volume 4
Bureaus of Efficiency: Reforming Local Government in the Progressive Era by Mordecai Lee. ISBN 978-0-87462-081-8. 292 pp. paper. $30
This volume reconstructs a largely forgotten phenomenon in American urban history, the establishment of bureaus of efficiency as part of the civic reform agenda during the Progressive era at the beginning of the twentieth century. The goal of such bureaus was to promote efficiency in local government, as a way of fighting political corruption, urban machines and political bosses. Efficiency bureaus sought to professionalize local government through civil service systems, open competitive bidding, separation of public administration from politics, and reorganizing departments to reduce duplication.
Bureaus of efficiency in some cities were nonprofit agencies pushing for governmental reform from the outside. In other cities, efficiency bureaus were established by reformers as departments within municipal government, school districts or counties. They viewed the latter approach as a way to press for reform from the inside. Two cities, Chicago and Milwaukee, had both nonprofit and municipal efficiency bureaus. Other major cities with efficiency bureaus included Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Kansas City (MO), and Rochester (NY).
The book is a study of these bureaus of efficiency, with especial attention to the interesting circumstance of two cities, Chicago and Milwaukee, having both a nonprofit efficiency bureau and a municipal one. This permitted comparing and contrasting the operations and impact of efficiency bureaus that were nonprofit agencies with the public sector one in the same city and during the same historical era.
Efficiency bureaus as vehicles for urban reform have since died out, but not their underlying goal. Efficiency has remained powerful siren call in American political culture in the twenty-first century. In that respect, little has changed conceptually from the days of the bureaus of efficiency during the Progressive era, nearly a century earlier. The legacy of the seemingly anachronistic concept of an efficiency bureau remains alive and well in contemporary times. This string of American urban history has not played itself out yet. The holy grail of efficiency in government is likely to remain a viable and powerful concept well into the twenty-first century.
Mordecai Lee, Ph.D., is a professor of governmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Prior to joining the academy, he was a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, legislative assistant to a Congressman, elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly for three terms and the State Senate for two terms, and executive director of a nonprofit agency. His main areas of interest are US history and government public relations. He is author of Institutionalizing Congress and the Presidency: The U.S. Bureau of Efficiency, 1916-1933 and The First Presidential Communications Agency: FDR’s Office of Government Reports and editor of Government Public Relations: A Reader.
Volume 3
Milwaukee’s Jesuit University: Marquette 1881–1981 by Thomas J. Jablonsky. ISBN-13: 978-087462080-1 & ISBN-10: 087462080-5. 438 pages. 130 illustrations. $40. Gold stamped cloth bound with color dustjacket. Notes. Index.
Inspired by the ambitions of Milwaukee’s first bishop, John Martin Henni, Marquette College opened in September 1881 on a hilltop overlooking the city’s expanding downtown. Named for the great explorer and missionary of the American Midwest, Pére Jacques Marquette, the institution’s educational foundation drew upon the well-developed, clearly-elucidated traditions of the Society of Jesus. After twenty-five years as a small, liberal arts college, Marquette blossomed into Wisconsin’s largest private university through its affiliation with the Milwaukee Medical College in 1907, the purchase of two, privately-owned law schools in 1908, the establishment of a engineering college that same fall, and finally, the opening of journalism and business programs in 1910. By this time, the institution had moved from its original hilltop site at Tenth and State streets to Grand Avenue, alongside the Church of the Gesu. Soon Marquette set a course toward coeducation, the first Catholic college/university in the world to make this choice. Marquette’s reputation as Milwaukee’s university grew steadily during the 1920s, accompanied by the school’s first building boom. Dependent from its earliest days upon tuition income, the school struggled through the hardships of the Great Depression and enrollment disruptions of World War II. With the end of that conflict, however, Marquette came into full glory, becoming by the late 1950s the largest Catholic university in the country. The quarter of a century preceding the school’s centennial celebration in 1981 was highlighted by an urban renewal program that transformed the campus neighborhood, by the appearance of a lay-dominated leadership core, and by an outspoken student body experiencing every emotion of the 1960s and 1970s. Based on a complete rereading of the university archives, this volume depicts the first one hundred years of Milwaukee’s Jesuit University, with an emphasis upon the themes of student life, administrative decision-making, and Marquette in Milwaukee.
Thomas Jablonsky, a member of the Department of History at Marquette, is the Harry G. John Professor of Urban Studies. Born and raised in Chicago, the author completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at California State University, Los Angeles, and his doctorate in American history at the University of Southern California where he subsequently spent nearly two decades before coming to Marquette University in 1995 as director of the Institute for Urban Life. Milwaukee’s Jesuit University is the third volume in the Urban Life Series, published by Marquette University Press.
Order Milwaukee's Jesuit University: Marquette, 1881-1981 by Dr. Thomas J. Jablonsky
Volume 2
Milwaukee Stories. Edited by Thomas J. Jablonsky. ISBN-13: 978-0-87462-079-5-0 and ISBN-10: 0-87462-079-1. Urban Life Series # 2. Paper. 464 pp. $30
Section Editors:
Brigitte Charaus
John A. Degniz
John McCarthy
Christopher Miller
Daryl Webb
Milwaukee’s captivating evolution from a settlement blessed with nature’s bounties to a mighty industrial workplace is presented through its people, places, and institutions. Culled from the publications of the Milwaukee County Historical Society, these articles provide intimate accounts of the area’s original inhabitants, pioneering settlers such as Solomon Juneau, entrepreneurs who saw a prosperous future on the shores of Lake Michigan, ethnic and racial groups who envisioned themselves as part of that future, institutions such as hospitals and a veterans’ home designed to serve residents, and political leaders whose careers ranged from crook to guardian angel.
Each thematic section is introduced by a short essay that supplies a context for the articles that follow. Photographs from the collections of the County Historical Society provide fleeting glimpses into yesterday’s world. A collaborative effort of the Milwaukee County Historical Society and Marquette University, Milwaukee Stories brings home the adage that each one of us, great and small, contributes our individual piece to the development of local history. May each reader savor these lives from Milwaukee’s past.
Volume 1
In the Richness of the Earth: A History of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, 1843-1958
by Dr. Steven M. Avella, Department of History, Marquette University
ISBN 0-87462-077-5 Urban Studies Series #1. 800 pp. 530 illustrations and tables. $45 paperbound
About In the Richness of the Earth
“A good balance between the imperatives of being a ‘good read’ and serving as a reference work to be used to look up specific pieces of information ? [a] straight-forward approach to the personalities and characters of prominent members of the hierarchy, clergy, and laity ?. it may ruffle a few feathers.” —John Buenker, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Parkside.
In the Richness of the Earth is a comprehensive history of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. As it covers the years from the foundation of the diocese in 1843 to the eve of Vatican II in 1958, this book provides a panorama of the people, events, and distinctive circumstances that have shaped Catholic life and identity in Wisconsin. It is richly illustrated with rare photos from a variety of archives and personal collections.
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